Oretachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai First Impressions

Oh my god! Let me just start off by saying how nervous and excited I am to be doing my first post at Rabbit Poets. I certainly hope that it’ll set a positive tone and a leave good impression of me!

Uhm...what's your name?

So, as most viewers who have done some background research on Oretachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai (OreTsuba) might know, OreTsuba is a visual novel that contains mature scenes. That means, it [should] have a lot of panty shots and almost hentai like scenes, featuring generous scoops of fanservice. Now, generally I don’t mind these types visual novels being adapted into anime, but the quality of the anime produced from those novels were far from spectacular…

Okay, so how does that effect OreTsuba? Well strictly speaking, I’ve pretty much hit the bullseye. Instead of being amazed by what could be potentially a great anime, I was rather at a loss of words for how disappointing OreTsuba’s first episode was.

Not that it wasn’t funny or it didn’t follow the visual novel’s story line, but this first episode was just an absolute mess. By absolute mess, I meant that there was no evident story line and that there were just too many characters that was introduced. Because the first episode was separated into 3 segments, each with their own specific setting, the main characters had no relations with each other whatsoever. Not that it’s a setup for disaster, but the incongruousness in the method they tried to meld 3 different plots together just seemed too awkward.

Oh the stereotyping...

There were certainly a lot of moments in the show when I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. The comedy presented in OreTsuba was the usual slapstick comedy that’s used to incite laughter in the audience. So far in my anime watching career (really…), I’ve yet to encounter a VN adaptation that has gotten me to do more than just a mere chuckle. Therefore, I will actually be looking forward for the comedic parts to OreTsuba. Although I do enjoy the jokes, it does have a shortcoming. I’m not particularly impressed with the timing in which they insert such jokes, because they sometimes overuse the jokes or do a complete mood change, which is just sometimes too much to handle. If the producers had held back on the practical jokes, perhaps OreTsuba could’ve become a much more sensible comedy.

As you might know, since OreTsuba is an adult rated VN, which means that there’s bound to be lots of panty shots in the anime. Surprisingly, it was much more moderated than I had thought and the scenes where panty shots were shown were actually quite reasonable. Certainly it was much better than ecchi anime such as Highschool of the Dead or Freezing, where panty shots occured about every 15 seconds. Thankfully, OreTsuba is not one of those shows where fanservice drives the entire show.

Despite OreTsuba’s wide arsenal of diverse (not really) characters, none of the characters came off as “unique” or even a little bit “interesting”. I mean, most of the male leads just appear to be harem leaders with cool attitudes and the whores girls just seem to be all favoring one guy. Totally original right? I know that’s how it should be in the VNs, but shouldn’ the producers at least try to change that for the anime? Also, in my opinion, the introduction of the large cast was pretty much what killed this episode. That’s because since the character’s weren’t interesting, the whole episode just seems to be a big blunder with a whole lot of nameless characters. Out of the 13 or so introduced characters, I only remembered about 3 of them by the end of the episode. I don’t think “zerg rushing” the audience with the full cast was the brightest tactic the producers could’ve used to get us accustomed to the characters.

URAGIRIMONO!

As much as I tried to think of the good points of the first OreTsuba episode, I just simply couldn’t overcome my negative thoughts about it. I originally had imagined a day that OreTsuba would become a big hit, but judging by what I’ve seen in the first episode, I’m pretty convinced it’ll just be one of those mediocre shows that only hentai otaku would watch. Anyways, I can’t express how disappointed by OreTsuba I am, mainly because I had such high hopes of doing a show that had a mixture of comedy/romance/ecchi for the Spring 2011 season.

As you can tell by what I’ve just said, it pretty much means I’m going to be ditching OreTsuba in favor of a more enjoyable show to blog about. Regardless, I’m still going to finish watching the show on my own time!

I thought that this show would be pretty interesting to watch, since I don’t normally like these genres of anime.. but you’re right =-=;; I was really dissapointed by it. Mostly, there was a lot of stereotypical.. and strange fanservice bits in here ^-^;;

Yeah that’s exactly what I had thought as well! Other than 30-sai no Hoken Taiiku, OreTsuba was the other show that I had showed great interest in blogging for in the Spring 2011 season. Although I don’t mind the genre of shows such as OreTsuba, but I get really picky on the content it has. Just as I had predicted in the “Spring 2011 Preview Post”, OreTsuba will be aiming at the mediocrity achieved by similar shows such as Fortune Arterial. On a regular basis, I wouldn’t call OreTsuba a disappointment, but because I had such high expectations, I was thoroughly displeased.

Also, you mention another good point. The fanservice was very stereotypical, ranging from maid pantsu to lolicon pantsu. Not that I have any complaints of gratuitous fanservice, but the fanservice almost seemed “forced”. By that, I mean the scenes that had fanservice didn’t have any pretext for it, so it seemed ridiculously awkward and random.

You really can’t judge this anime until you finish episode 4. The first three episodes are much like the first SIX of Steins;Gate. There’s not a lot of plot and the episodes are character driven. This is so that the viewer can familiarize themselves with the somewhat large cast and so that the later twists are more impacting. Episode one “zerg rushes” so that in the next two episodes you can be like “Oh yeah, that guy.” Yeah, I know how late I am. AND I HATE YOU FOR DROPPING THIS!